After quite a bit of rumors of a Google social network called +1, it looks like many people will be overwhelmed with Google's official announcement today. The company is beginning to roll out +1, which is a service that allows you to share anything on the internet you like or recommend on your Google profile and with your friends on Google. Your friends will then see your recommendations when conducting a search. It's pretty much the equivalent of the Facebook like button.

So is this going to take off? Probably not. It's just a button that appears next to search results, ads, and Google says eventually on websites across the web. The recommendations are added to your Google profile -- but too bad Google profiles aren't very popular. They are also shared with your friends, but what's the likelihood that your friends search about the same things you do? Fairly unlikely. And with the Facebook like button, why not just like a post instead of +1? All your friends on Facebook can see it. In addition, the Facebook like button is one click and done. The +1 button actually prompts you with a pop-up message to confirm that you'd like to share whatever you are recommending.

So as always, this is just Google's poor take on a service (or product, but service in this case) that's already successful. If you are at all interested in +1 before the full roll out, you can head over to Google's experiments page to opt in. Video below.